Originally Posted by
CDTraveler
Have you ever let your travel experienced teen make their own way to the airport and get to their flight independently?
No, I'm not completely crazy.
Situation: I will be flying transcon to attend a conference, and my son will be following me 2 days to spend time looking at colleges. From our house to the airport is a 5 minute walk to the train station, and the train goes directly to the airport. My son will be staying with a neighbor for two nights before he flies out. However the neighbor literally has less travel experience than my cat. I'm not sure having her accompany him to the airport would solve any problems, especially she's very stressed at the idea. I'm thinking if the kid has a notarized letter from me stating that he has my permission to fly solo to meet up with me, does online check-in at home, and has no checked bags, will anybody at the airport actually know or care that he is a minor traveling alone?
Note: this kid has been flying since he was 4 months old, and has flown unaccompanied several times before. My concern is not with his ability to manage the trip, but rather the airline or TSA spazzing out over his age.
Assuming a normal capability American teenager who is older than 15 years of age and traveled plenty of times before? Then he can get by easily enough as long as you are comfortable with his abilities and he has the means of payment and communication covered appropriately.
One of my first trips alone as a teenager was to go to a place to which I had never been before, all while taking some means of travel which I had never done before on my own. The most disturbing part of the trip was in the area closest to where I was being dropped off by a relative to commence the trip; and the disturbance was only encountered on the return home in an area where my family felt comfortable dropping me off and picking me up. On my return, on a street corner in NYC, while waiting for family to pick me up after my trip, some strange weirdo wanted to pick me up and take me in his car for who knows what. I walked away rather perturbed that I was being solicited by a guy looking for prostitutes, no less so when it was rather obvious that I was a minor. I took shelter in the closest store, one that happened to be operated by those whom I presumed were some immigrant African Muslim people. A few minutes later, while waiting in the store entrance, the weirdo got out of his car, went into a nearby building and came back with two very young-looking East Asian women whom I and -- soon thereafter -- the NYPD suspected to be prostitutes. The NYPD officer warned the weirdo that he knew what he was up to and not to come around again. I chalked it up to being one of those times where a child knows he is no longer a naive child; and a sign that my family knew enough about me not to be worried about sending me off as they did. I had a means for paying for what needed to be paid and knew how to communicate what needed to be communicated; I also knew what I needed to do to get to where I needed to get to my destination and back. This trip was a walk in the park relative to my first last-minute business trip as an adult in an era before cell phones were in the hands of the majority.